Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. You act as a tactical implementer as you add no insight/or value to product development.

Business Model 315

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 315

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Here in 2021 startups operate in a more distributed fashion earlier in their lifecycle, a trend which preceded COVID but certainly was accelerated by the remote work environment for knowledge workers brought on by the pandemic.

Chicago 177

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 177

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Here in 2021 startups operate in a more distributed fashion earlier in their lifecycle, a trend which preceded COVID but certainly was accelerated by the remote work environment for knowledge workers brought on by the pandemic.

Chicago 156

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 156

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Here in 2021 startups operate in a more distributed fashion earlier in their lifecycle, a trend which preceded COVID but certainly was accelerated by the remote work environment for knowledge workers brought on by the pandemic.

Chicago 136

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 136

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 15, 2018

Smarter operations: big data analytics, robotic processes and smart contracting to optimise business operations. New products: creative solutions to enhance the products and services portfolio which can improve the customer journey. Up to £500k initial investment depending on company stage. World class mentors.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Due Diligence Startup Analytics 60

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He has grown our US operations from 1 employee (him) to a global organization of 75 employees that will finish the year with 8-digit revenues (90+% recurring) and more than 350% year-over-year growth. Growth like this, this early in a company’s lifecycle rarely happens. What Rob wrote in his post is right.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2015

However, this relatively simple principle is game changing for early-stage operations that often focus exclusively on the Big Hairy Audacious Goals of a decade ago. So, while world domination shouldn’t necessarily be your Day 1 objective, you CAN get there with the help of OKRs. Annual goals aren’t good enough.”

Agile 100

Agile Startup Cofounder Metrics 100

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Women Entrepreneurs Can

NOVEMBER 19, 2022

A Venture Capital Firm is a firm that invests in startups and early-stage companies. Early-Stage Investments vs. Mid-Stage Investments. Investing in a startup company carries a high degree of risk, particularly at the early stage. However, not all firms are venture capital firms. Management Company.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital Early Stage Liquidity Event SEC 52

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

In addition, I’ve noted a few multi-product lending firms, e.g., Kapitus and United Capital Source , which provide RBI as one of many structural options to companies seeking capital. . We have a special program if you are pre-seed and need product development. The average monthly operating expenses is $70,335.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Let’s start out with the basic functions of a tech company: 1) Engineering 2) Marketing 3) Sales 4) Business development 5) PR 6) Design 7) Product Management 8) HR 9) Operations 10) Finance Ok, that's just overwhelming. In a way, you can think of BD as “sales when you don’t know what the product is yet.”

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 10, 2020

Instead, they must prioritize which kinds of data will be the most valuable to them as they begin operating, so they can take the most significant advantage of what they do initially collect. In almost every case, the data that’s most useful to a startup in its early days is the information needed to build complete customer profiles.

Customer 180

Customer Startup Analytics B2B 180

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 6, 2022

18:05] How does the Founder Space operate? [20:21] And that's because you're just operating on different scales and you need to focus on different things. That is the role of the CEO in an early stage company. You won't give up, tell us a little bit about the founder's space, how it operates.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 98

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

NZ Entrepreneur

AUGUST 12, 2020

Intellectual property can create trouble for startups in their early stages, and getting it right is a crucial aspect to running a successful business. You also want to avoid rushing your product development and making mistakes for the sake of sorting out intellectual property matters.

Intellectual Property 91

Intellectual Property New Zealand Startup Early Stage 91

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

No one was actually quite that good, but some VCs had “golden guts” for these kinds of operating issues. “Oh yes, company X, they’re having problem 343. Here are the six likely ways that it will resolve, with these probabilities.” Yet something in the back of my mind bothered me.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 141

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 141

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Another advantage of the early stages is that most dont have to juggle too many competing priorities. If you dont have customers, a product, investors, or a board of directors, you can pretty much stay focused on just one thing at a time. Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you? ScienceDaily: Corporate culture is most important.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 29, 2024

When I think about it, it's in the early stages of that entire co-founding team needs to be aligned on what these goals are and the fact that they do actually work toward that vision. We look at it at MIT as an order of operations, not of parentheses and then exponents, et cetera. (13:10): 08:56): We might run an experiment.

Entrepreneur 46

Entrepreneur Cofounder Early Stage Artificial Inteligence 46

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 240

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 240

The Equity Kicker

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Different investors place different weights on the three elements but as a rule earlier stage investors place more emphasis on the team and later stage investors place more emphasis on the market. Some very early stage investors go as far as to say that for them team is everything.

Seed Stage 60

Seed Stage Later Stage Early Stage Partner 60

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

Nic Brisbourne is Managing Partner at Forward Partners, the UK’s leading early-stage VC, currently supporting the UK’s next generation of AI, e-commerce and marketplace businesses. I think we differ a little from the rest of the industry, though, particularly with our focus on early stage companies.

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Early stage startups have to survive one day at a time and are often presented with limited choices of the moment that enable them to continue. At early stages you probably don’t have an assembly line and can’t clearly define any particular job. Your Product Plan must fit into context of your overall business mission.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

Small Business Force

SEPTEMBER 10, 2017

Whether you’re an early-stage company or have been around for ten years, for entrepreneurs, leading and managing a small business, especially its growth, is never an easy task. "We realized we weren’t going to make our numbers." You don’t do that without a plan. But it was management’s plan. Their fault?

Small Business 32

Small Business Leadership Salary Forecast 32

BeyondVC

MAY 30, 2007

As an early stage investor and board member of several companies, I am fortunate to get the opportunity to work with some great entrepreneurs and also pattern match and observe trends, both good and bad, in early stage companies.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Startup Engineer Portfolio 60

Version One Ventures

MAY 17, 2016

Amazon ’s magic is that it’s a behemoth of a company that still operates like a founder-driven start-up in several key areas. But, he also developed some unique tools to institutionalize his core values in the company. This is partly because Bezos has a strong cultural influence throughout the company. For example…. Customer Focus.

API 113

API Early Stage Hiring Acquisition 113

The Equity Kicker

JULY 16, 2015

Team structure in early stage ecommerce and marketplace companies is a function of manpower and skills necessary to build the company and the founder(s)’ skillset(s). The development requirement might be full time, or approaching full time, but the product, design and marketing requirements are part time.

eCommerce 60

eCommerce Burn Rate Early Stage Hiring 60

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. Switch your attention from product development to sales.

Mezzanine 120

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 120

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

When seeking equity investments, the source of capital is, for the most part, tied to the stage of capital being raised. You see, equity capital is raised in stages or rounds. The five main stages include the following: 1. Early Stage Investment (Series A & B) 4. Pre-Seed Funding 2. Seed Funding 3.

Equity 88

Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

The economics of these process trade-offs are discussed in the Principles of Product Development Flow.) Heres an excerpt: In a previous article, we called Toyota’s product development system the “second Toyota paradox.&# Labels: product development 5comments: new york web development company said.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

LSC: Tell us about the customer development you did for your book: Alistair: We''ve been thrilled at how Lean Analytics seemed to resonate with founders. As operators of an accelerator—and founders in our own right—Ben and I had constantly struggled with what the “right” numbers are for a business.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Every conversation about fund raising should start with what your current operational needs are and the stage of your business. million and you’re an early stage business this is probably a fair deal. How much capital do I need to run my business effectively right now? So if you can take 27% dilution for $1.5

Pre-Money Valuation 303

Pre-Money Valuation Dilution Valuation PR 303

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

Pivotability Nowadays everyone agrees that it’s both likely and healthy for an early-stage startup to be on the lookout for an intelligent pivot. They’re more worried about the problems which don’t naturally get corrected over time. If the cost of support is high, A will kill profitability and B wins.

Customer 320

Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320